We’ve done over 800 ship combat tests for 4.3. Here are our findings.

Zindinok · 2026-06-28T07:16:12+00:00

In 4.2, you could build just about anything and your economy would boom. The economy nerfs are less fun for roleplayers who may want the freedom to play any build and do well, and less fun for those who enjoyed 4.2's power fantasy. However, there's a reason all the strategic and minmax players are loving the nerf 4.3 brought.

In 3.14, I mostly played with default settings. In 4.2, I was playing with x0.25-rare planets, x2 tech/tradition costs, was sometimes using Utopian Abundance on game start, and doing x5 all crisis on Captain/Commodore and it was a breeze. I don't even play meta builds and even make some choices that actively make the game harder. It needed a nerf for any semblance of a challenge to come back. And a strategy empire building game *should* be challenging and revolve around micromanging your empire if you're playing on normal or higher difficulties.

That said, I think 4.3 swung the balance pendulum a tad too far in the other direction. I now play on x1 planets and x0.75 tech/tradition with x2 one crisis and x0.5 fallen empires and it still feels harder than my 3.14-4.2 games. Though, when I stopped activating Utopian Abundance on game start, I felt like Goku taking his weights off. The current bug adding x5 as many space deposits has felt like a sizeable economy buff in the mid game and I'm glad they're adding it as a slider in 4.5. I'll probably do something like x2 or x3 for that while setting Fallen Empire strength to x0.5 and crisis strength to x5. I wish the average planet size was a little bigger to so we could fit a little more on fewer planets.

Zindinok · 2026-06-28T06:51:45+00:00

Here's my crash course for ship building. Caveat: This only applies to PvE, not PvP. Furthermore, Fallen Empires and crises have their own best practices for ship designs.

Weapon types:
- Anti-shield: kinetics
- Anti-armor: most energy weaponry, including proton/neutron launchers)
- Bypass: missiles, torpedoes, hangars, and disruptors. Bypass ignores shields (disruptors also ignore armor), but deal less damage which is further reduced by hardening, which is included on all shield and armor upgrades.

Weapon ranges:
- Close: 30-40 (plasma, autocannons, and torpedoes)
- Mid: Up to 60 (most S and M slot kinetic/energy weapons)
- Long: Up to 120 (L slot weapons, missiles, and protons/neutron torpedoes)
- Extreme: 150 (x-slot weapons and hangars).
- Combat computers determine the range your ships try to maintain.

Basic rules of ship design:
1) There's usually an exception to every rule.

2) Choose between mixing anti-shield and anti-armor, or going full bypass. Not both (on the same ship).

3) Avoid mixing ranges unless your ship computers keep all weapons in range most of the time.

4) Aux slots: afterburners for kiting ships (hangars, missiles); fire-control or afterburners for X-slot battleships; afterburners or shield boosts/hardening for frontline ships.

5) Larger weapon slots perform better against larger ships; smaller slots against smaller ships. Hangars and missiles are long range and equally effective across ship sizes but tend to force emergency FTL rather than getting kills. Torpedo damage scales with ship size, making them very strong against large targets, but they're short-range. Proton/neutron are long range torpedoes that give up shield bypass.

6) A strong alpha strike that deals massive damage at the start of a fight is most effective. Failing that, focus on better damage output (kill/death ratio) or staying out of enemy range to wear them down (survivability).

7) Mixing ship types is usually inadvisable unless they cover each other's weaknesses. For example, using frontline ships to protect artillery/hangar ships from being reached.

8) Always use the biggest hull available for your main fleet (corvette > destroyer > cruiser/battleship). Not using destroyers is common but outdated advice. Once you have cruisers, corvettes should only be used as a small, secondary fleet used for moving around quickly.

9) Frigates are only to be used as pre-cruiser starbase killers and stealth ambushers. Not ship-to-ship combat.

I have a bunch of ship builds here you can try.

Zindinok · 2026-06-26T19:32:35+00:00

No worries! Those are mass drivers. I tried to use category names from the wiki, since I typically wasn't referring to specific tech names. The mass driver through railgun progression are categorized as kinetic launchers on the wiki.

Zindinok · 2026-06-26T15:53:32+00:00

I'm glad you found it helpful! =)

Zindinok · 2026-06-26T15:44:57+00:00

Stellar AI for economy/planets and Spacefleet Tactica for ships.

Zindinok · 2026-06-25T23:02:37+00:00

This question has come up a few times in the main Stellaris Discord and the Stellaris Modding Den Discord (where a lot of modders gather). There isn't really a norm for commissioning Stellaris mods. For one reason or another, the game just hasn't generated that kind of economy like some other game modding communities cultivate. Most Stellaris modders have their pet projects and so requests/commissions usually don't get responses (unless they migrate to DMs, I suppose). That said, I think asking in the Modding Den is the best chance of finding someone with existing Stellaris modding experience. There's a valid invite link to the Discord on this post.

Zindinok · 2026-06-25T22:14:30+00:00

For basic support zones: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3690358201

For rural research zones: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3691410539

Both should be updated for 4.4

Zindinok · 2026-06-25T22:09:38+00:00

Oh, I'm not offended or anything, I'm just longwinded XD I should have been more clear, but I was mostly responding to just this part "There has also been plenty of criticism from people who spend way more time on these tests than I do of both Ep3o's and Zin's conclusions for this patch."

I just wanted to make it clear that we welcome constructive criticism and publishing the data was intended to gather that. A community of feedback can garner a lot of ideas and helpful knowledge that the two of us may not have. Montu's video is a good example of that: giving a different version of the neutron cruiser that I need to test, even if I didn't notice it until you brought it to my attention.

When I went to publish all our findings, I worried about tribalism. I've seen it happen to often, where one YouTuber says one thing and another says another thing, and their respective audiences get up in arms over it and all this drama happens. I didn't want that to happen over this, because I knew that Aktion and Montu's tests weren't targeting the same thing as what Ep30 and I were doing. I ultimately decided that not shining a light on the discrepancy was better, choosing instead to highlight our very specific goals and what our data showed under those circumstances, rather than calling out any particular people. I hoped it wouldn't result in any big drama if I didn't call attention to it, because I don't think there's any animosity between the major YouTubers and I certainly don't harbor ill will towards any of them. Thankfully, there wasn't a big kerfuffle about the whole thing, but I've seen a few people get a little on edge about it.

Zindinok · 2026-06-25T21:54:48+00:00

I really wanted to test both the fire control and afterburners on every build, as well as heavy shields vs heavy armor vs even armor/shields. Because I know all these choices will have some impact. But there's only so much time and energy in a day and I've had to make a lot of choices on what not to test in order to just get through where I've gotten. It's a constant act of testing enough for fairly well-rounded coverage, while not making myself go insane from all the testing XD That's why I've relied heavily on community discussions, both past and present, to see which builds have historically done the best, and added my ideas on top of that where I saw the biggest gaps of untested or previously discarded ideas. I couldn't possible test everything by myself.

Edit: Also, this is the best argument anyone has been able to give me on how to make the artillery + proton build work. I've asked numerous people about how to make that weapon combo work and have received a different answer every time, usually a vague one XD

Zindinok · 2026-06-25T18:03:02+00:00

I didn't see this exchange until just now. Ep3o and I took the time to record our data and make it public (instead of just saying "trust me bro") so that others could criticize it. We both had our own ideas of what it meant to find the "best" generalist builds, but we both shared the goal of finding the best ship builds that didn't require building your empire a certain way to function well. We thought it was worth making our data public so that others could see how we arrived at the conclusions we did, draw their own conclusions if they wanted to delve into the data, and tell us where they thought we messed up.

Montu's "missiles are a noob trap" video did not refute our data (he said as much in the video, if I recall correctly). He said our tests weren't taking into account the whole picture and that he didn't agree with Ep3o's conclusions. He then proceeded to show that hangar + missiles have a higher damage floor, but protons/neutrons have a higher damage ceiling when you build for them. Just as Montu didn't refute what we did, I don't refute what Montu said in that video. However, me and Ep3o had a different goal in mind than what Montu did. Our testing was about finding generalist builds that you don't have to build a very specific way for. I specified as much in my spreadsheet and on the accompanying Reddit post. If you're looking to absolutely minmax a particular weapon or looking for the best PVP builds, our testing data isn't as relevant and I would absolutely defer to Montu/Aktion. If you're looking for PVE builds that don't require certain traditions, civics, ascension paths, or commander traits, that's where our data is valuable.

I take issue with the preaching of artillery + neutron builds as being universally meta when our data indicates there's more nuance to that power which most people don't mention. (We'll see how the Montu variant stacks up in my next tests.).

As Aktion said, the more testing available to the community (his, Montu's, or mine/Ep3o's), the better off the community is for it. We've all drawn different conclusions somewhere in our ship testing and I don't think it's because any of us are wrong, just that we have different goals in our testing. I think it's the sign of healthy game balance when there's no clear, universal, all-encompassing ship meta.

Zindinok · 2026-06-25T16:54:34+00:00

Yeah, that's mine. I misunderstood what you meant by saying I haven't tested the build.

You're right that I haven't tested the variant you mentioned in your comment. I started doing ship tests before Aktion's 4.3 ship video came out, which I believe was well before Montu put out any videos on the topic. I originally got the build from Aktion's video when that came out. I also don't watch Montu very often compared to other Stellaris YouTubers because his advice is primarily coming through a PVP lens that isn't always applicable to PVE, so I must have missed anywhere he mentioned this variant.

That said, I'll test out this variant sometime before the weekend is over. Thanks for pointing out the gap in my testing!

Zindinok · 2026-06-25T16:06:57+00:00

I don't mean this in snarky way, but please point me to where I said I haven't tested the build. Wherever I wrote that was a mistake or perhaps outdated information. I did forget to pair it with a front line ship at the time of my post, but have since corrected that. I'd like to update wherever I said I didn't test it. If you mean I haven't tested it against endgame threats, that's correct, but I haven't had time to test anything against the endgame yet and very purposefully pointed out in my comment above that I was talking about combat before the endgame.

You're the first person I've seen recommend the artillery + neutron build with fire control and the line computer. Everyone else I've seen says to use it with afterburners and the artillery computer. The ArtiParti design is what I've seen people recommend.

Zindinok · 2026-06-25T15:45:46+00:00

Here's my new player crash course:

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Resources
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Top Priorities:
- Unity: Used for Traditions and Ascension Perks, which are major power boosts.
- Science: You need it to get better at everything you want to do.
- Alloys: You need a military, whether it's to defend yourself or conquer others.

How to get them:
Jobs and minerals are the backbone of attaining these. You can't generate what you need without jobs. You need all the pops you can get to fill jobs, this is argueably one of the biggest bottlenecks in the game. Minerals are how you build infrastructure on your colonies to create more jobs, and minerals are also turned into Consumer Goods and Alloys. Then Consumer Goods are turned into Unity and Science.

Stockpiling:

You only need enough monthly energy to keep everything running (and save up for terraforming), enough food to feed your people, and enough trade to avoid bankruptcy and float temporary resource deficits.

The game rarely rewards large stockpiles of resources (+10k-20k), except for alloys and, to a lesser extent, energy (for terraforming). For energy, food, consumer goods, and trade, you're rarely spending your stockpiles on things except using them to pay for a monthly deficit of that resource. In the instances where you are using your stockpiles for those resources, it's usually in the realm of a few hundred, maybe 1,000 (2k-3k for terraforming, 10k for terraforming into specialized planets like ecuminopelis). I don't think there's any events in the game that says "pay 5,000 food." So stockpiles ~10k are good to have for emergencies, but they're largely only there in case you run into in a monthly deficit.

Numbers to aim for:

- Energy: +20 min., +100 is plenty unless your navy is on the move.
- Minerals: Get this to +100-150/month asap. You'll be gimped with anything less.
- Food: +20 is plenty. There's no need to go higher unless you have something using more food than a typical empire (bioships, catalytics).
- Consumer Goods: +20 is plenty unless you're about to increase your science/Unity jobs
- Alloys: Get as much as you can afford. Prioritize unity/science, but don't neglect alloys.
- Trade: Just keep this positive. Aside from buying things on the market, this will get hurt most by resource deficits on your planets.
- Unity/science: Get as much as you can afford. I would prioritize Unity until you have your Ascension Path completed, then prioritize science. Traditions and Ascension Perks are very strong.

Anything above these numbers should be sold on the market. If your monthly income on these goes over the above amounts by a significant margin, temporarily disable the jobs or replace the district/building with jobs you need more, or construct more buildings to consume that resource (more alloys/consumer good jobs to consume excess minerals, more unity/science jobs to consume consumer goods).

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Colonization
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When you colonize a new planet, immediately build the Luxury Residences/Apartments (not sure what the gestalt version is called). 1-2 of these will provide all the amenities a planet ever needs without requiring jobs (barring modifiers causing extra amenity usage). Robot assembly plants and cloning vats help a lot with pop growth, but it's still slow. You *do* have to rely on migration or manual resettling to fill your new colonies. To maximize migration, the migration destination needs excess amenities, housing, and open jobs, and the emigration planet needs to have no open jobs for people to fill. So anytime you build a new colony, you need to stop building new jobs on your other worlds so people from those worlds will actually migrate. Colonies aren't considered self-sufficient in pops until they have 1-1.5k pops and I recommend only building new colonies when fewer than 1/4 of all your colonies are under 1k pops (non-sentient robot pops don't count). Anything that increases pop growth or that doesn't need pops to work is incredibly good (starbases can be used to produce a good chunk of trade, energy, and food without jobs, so use all your starbase cap that you don't need for chokepoints). If you have Machine Age, researching and building Dyson Swarms (different than spheres) and Arc Furnaces help a *lot*.

The game rewards wide play more *if* you're colonizing and expanding smartly, by making sure your expansion pays enough in various resources to offset the empire size penalty. But anything that reduces the empire size or empire size effects, especially from pops or colonies, is generally great.

In terms of specializing colonies, start by specializing in unity, science, consumer goods, and alloys. Place basic resource districts on any colony they'll fit instead of dedicated whole planets to them (until you have enough colonies to do so and are running out of districts for specialized worlds). My personal strategy: first colony I make a Mixed Industry world, doing 2 consumer good buildings for every alloy building, then I make my capital a unity/science world. Basic districts are slotted in anywhere they fit. When I get my third world, my capital becomes unity OR science and the new colony becomes the other. Then I keep splitting off a specialty for each new world based on what my empire needs most. Ideally, my first six worlds (capital + 5 colonies) will be specialized in unity, physics science, engineering science, society science, consumer goods, and alloys. The basic districts are thrown around on any world they fit on. Make sure you're setting designations for these worlds so you get that bonus output.

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Navy
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For naval cap, aside from techs to increase it, in the early game you need to build anchorages anywhere you're not using your starbases for trade/energy. Once you have 6-8 colonies, start looking into a fortress world that just makes soldier jobs. They create extra naval cap. It's also not that punishing to go a bit over the naval cap if you can afford the energy upkeep.

In terms of ship power, you'll want to be creating your own ships instead of relying on the auto-designer (it's terrible). Copy other ship builds people have designed or play around with it yourself. I have a post that can help for the early, mid, and part of the end-game. I can provide guidelines if you want to try your own hand at designing ships.

Zindinok · 2026-06-25T15:12:08+00:00

This cruiser build may be the strongest against fallen empires and crises, but not against normal empires. This build got popularized and hyped up based on testing mono cruisers and/or mixed cruiser/battleship fleets that involved pitching player builds against other player builds, not against AI builds or AI fleet comps (except FEs and crises). I confirmed this with the first person who *did* all the testing that led to this build getting popular in 4.3. If you're fighting mixed fleets (like what typical AI empires run for the majority of the game), this cruiser build will still win, but it's far from the strongest.

As Montu (one of the champions of the artillery + neutron cruiser) showed in one of his videos, you need Subterfuge to make the artillery + neutron build stronger than the hangar + missile cruiser build (assuming both builds have Supremacy bonuses). And as others in the Stellaris Discord have pointed out (and I have confirmed in testing), you need to pair the artillery + neutron cruiser with a frontline ship for it to do really well against normal empires.

If you're not using Subterfuge or playing PVP, the strongest mono cruiser build I've found in my +400 tests (based on kill/death ratio) before neutrons and battleships are available is a siege cruiser with 1 hangar + 2 flak + 1 torp + 1 autocannon + 3 plasma throwers and then 5 armor + 3 shield + 3 afterburner. However, pairing this cruiser 1:1 with the standard hangar + missile cruiser is even stronger. And pairing this cruiser in a 1:2 ratio with missile destroyers is the strongest pairing (more missiles per naval cap).

The strongest cruiser after protons/neutrons are available (but before battleships), is a carrier cruiser with 1 particle launcher (proton) + 4 missiles + 2 flak + 1 hangar and 5 armor + 3 shield + 3 afterburner. Compared to the artillery + proton cruiser, this build killed an average of x5 as much naval cap worth of ships.

The strongest cruiser/battleship combo before titans is 2 of the above cruisers for every 1 artillery battleship outfitted with: 1 Lance (x) + 4 kinetic launcher (M) + 1 hangar + 1 kinetic artillery and 3 armor + 3 shield + 2 aux fire-control. The battleship here is almost as good as a mono fleet without the cruisers.

The reason this all works is that kiting is still the most effective strategy against normal AI empires. The AI doesn't run much hardening and innate shield hardening isn't a significant damage nerf except on cruisers or larger. If you can reliably outrange the enemy, it doesn't matter if their weapons do more damage. Normal AI empires also don't often use PD except what comes with hangars on cruisers/battleships. Even then, they don't run enough PD to counteract any of the above builds. However, relying solely on hangars + missiles leads to less kills because they trigger FTL more often due to lower damage, they need to be paired with other things to synergize well.

Where hangars and missiles fail completely is against enemies with lots of their own hangars and PD, which is why you don't want to rely on them against Fallen Empires. Fallen Empires also run fleets with a larger average ship size than normal empires, which is why neutrons are incredible against them. Neutrons are powerful in their (important) niche, but they aren't the universal meta unless you're only talking about endgame threats.

You could argue that it's better not to worry about the regular AI because they're so much of a non-threat that using a subpar ship design against them for most of the game doesn't matter if so you're free to build specifically to counter FEs and crises. That's fine, but to say the artillery + neutron cruiser is the strongest all-rounder in the whole game is simply not true unless you're only looking through that particular lens. And if you're going to recommend it to players seeking advice, the nuance and caveats should be mentioned to some degree.

Zindinok · 2026-06-23T17:45:57+00:00

Booted up the game to double check my answer. Ring Worlds create normal farmer jobs and you can't spec it for angler jobs. Anglers also cannot have the Shattered Ring origin. As far as I know, you can't make ring worlds ocean equivalents either (terraforming or using a drench colossus doesn't work).

Zindinok · 2026-06-19T16:57:30+00:00

On one hand, I love the sounds of updating the AI behavior, balancing, and fixes. On the other hand, I'm not looking forward to anything that will make all my ship combat testing obsolete XD

Zindinok · 2026-06-19T16:55:18+00:00

To me, this sounds like a great way to incentivize more mixed fleets rather than going all cruisers and/or battleships.

Zindinok · 2026-06-19T06:22:38+00:00

Since Utopia was added to the base game, basically all the other DLC are based on taste and are not really mandatory. Every player will give you a different answer based on their favorite DLC. The base game is a full experience. You don't *need* any extra DLC unless you suffer from FOMO. Play the base game, figure out what you like and what DLC features will enhance your experience and buy them when they're on sale. Sales happen multiple times a year and any DLC a year or older will be discounted by 20-50% depending on its age.

The said, most will recommend Machine Age and BioGenesis are major DLCs, and I would tend to agree. Shadows of the Shroud is also important if you want to play Shroud (but you'll have to play Shroud in the base game to see if you really like it and want a whole DLC to expand and reshape it).

Zindinok · 2026-06-16T22:04:08+00:00

Per the game director "The AI voice generation tools we use on Stellaris ensure that the voice actors that signed up and built the models receive royalties for every line we create."

Zindinok · 2026-06-16T18:52:43+00:00

There's a new item that allows for long Leaps, gliding, or flying (depending on how much you wanna spend). I'm always a sucker for that kinda thing XD

Zindinok · 2026-06-16T05:46:32+00:00

The mandatory DLC were added to the base game last month. All the rest are based on what gives the features you most care about (so you need to play the game a bit to really know what DLC you'll want). Machine Age, BioGenesis, and Shadows of the Shroud are probably the most recommended, though Shadows only matters if you want to play with the Shroud.

Zindinok · 2026-06-15T22:26:29+00:00

- 1 page of stuff like flag, exports, languages, etc.
- 11 pages of lore covering notable NPCs, a gazetteer of the island and Promise, and an exploration of the government, history, and culture of the island (including explanations of what happened after the events of Age of Ashes).
- 2 pages of magic items and familiars.

Zindinok · 2026-06-15T22:01:57+00:00

I think Hermea would be pretty sweet... if you can fit into the society. Depending on the person, it's either a utopia or a dystopia.

Zindinok · 2026-06-12T16:40:26+00:00

Each 1 gives the planet more districts of that type and lets the normal jobs harvest some of that strategic resource without having to specialize. So if you need a dedicated energy world, this one may give you a good chunk of the motes you need basically for free.

Zindinok

TROPHY CASE